Once upon a time...in a land far faw away

In Once Upon a Time In the West directed by Sergio Leone, there were many key scenes that helped plot develpoment, character development and were key to the story. But the scene i am going to discuss was the showdown between Harmonica (Charles Bronson) and Frank (Henry Fonda...Janes Fonda's dad). This scene was a long anticapted showdown between good and evil, right and wrong, and protaginast vs antagonist. The wole movie leading up to this scene was about Frank wanting to become more then a cowboy, wanting to become a business man and take over the land from Jill McBain (whose husband was murdered earlier in the movie for his land) and make a town on it. Harmonica comes in and for quite sometime you think he is protecting Jill, but in actuality the only reason he sticks with her is to get to Frank. Harmonica even killed all of Franks men becuase they were about to turn on him and Harmonica decided to kill all of them just so he could have the pleasure of doing the deed himself. He stick by JIll becuase he knows eventually Frank will come for the land. The whole movie culminates into one final scene (a tribute to the OK Corral scene in "My Darling Clementine") where Harmonica and Frank showdown outside of Jill's house where the train is being built. Rather then in most movies where it goes by quick and you see the loser die in a flash and the winner grab the spoils, this film draws it out for a very long period of time. They meet in the blistering western heat, and circle eachother round and round till they both stop and talk. They talk about the "last of a dying breed" being the TRUE man, not the business man. You see them shoot at eachother and the camera pans up the body of a dying man and you see his face...its frank. then you know Harmonica was the victor and shot frank. As frank was dying he looks up at him and says "tell me...who are you?" Harmonica says nothing and it flashes back to when he was young and you see him holding up his dying brother and Frank laughing. this is significant becuase you now know the true reason Harmonica has a vendetta against Frank.
The significance of this scene as a whole is immeasureable. Without this scense the movie doesnt make sense. Without this scense this movie is an awkward, long, plotless movie with random killings. This puts everything in prespective and i thoroughly enjoy this movie as a whole because of this one scene.
On a 2nd note i think Leone is a genius for making this movie a suspense ending rather then knowing his intentions the whole time...i think it really brings the movie to a different level.